Monday, December 21, 2009

OUR DAY WAS SO SLOW WE ALMOST WENT BACKWARDS!!

If our day would have been any slower I'm sure we would have traveled backwards in time. Kelly had a momentary lapse of reason this morning when she contemplated driving over to Sierra Vista. I was quick to point out it was only 4 days before Christmas & that place would be totally nuts with chaotic traffic & stressed out frenzied holiday shoppers. Fortunately she came to her senses & relaxed with her book for the day with the exception of her exercise class this morning.

<< KELLY’S PHOTO OF A BUNNY DRINKING FROM A PLASTIC KID’S POOL LAST NIGHT

Ray, from our Monday afternoon photo group sent an email saying he had to go see the Vet this afternoon for his semi-annul dis-temper shot so I figured that meant our photo group was canceled. Said he figured I needed a rabies shot too but didn't figure the Vet would have enough serum to settle me down!! Told him I didn't have my list done anyway. What list!! The list of people I carry in my wallet so that if I get rabies I'll have a list of people who I'm gonna go out & bite first!!

SAND HILL CRANES TAKING FLIGHT FROM A CORNFIELD

Not to worry about me putting music on the site folks. Mentioned yesterday I thought music on sites was a bad idea & only suggested I might put an optional button on sometime if I happened to have a special photo album I wanted some music to go with it. Not likely I'll even do that though. Whewwww, close call there!!

Only another 4 or 5 days & all this Christmas schmozzle will thankfully be over for another year. If I have to sit through one more morning Christmas cooking show on television I'm going to up & snort!! Christmas was a lot different when I was a kid growing up in the late 40's & early to mid 50's. I remember what Christmas used to be like & it was nowhere near the commercial hype, stress, & mess, it is nowadays. Why anyone with a lick of good sense would be thrashing & bashing around in a store this week is beyond me. I began backing away from the whole Christmas thing in the mid 80's somewhere & that included the thrashing & bashing. Just got bashed by a maddened shopaholics grossly over loaded grocery cart one too many times I guess. Fortunately when I met Kelly she was traveling down the same track in her life & since then we have stopped all the gift giving & Christmas card sending. No more credit card mania & no more helter skelter running all over the place trying to please everybody. And best of all, no more of those horribly boring company Christmas parties. Yaaaaaaaay!! Bah Humblebug:))

AND ,THIS FOLKS……….IS McNEAL, ARIZONA:))

Want to welcome our newest follower, Renee. Hmmmmm, wonder if she is from off the coast of British Columbia somewhere. Welcome aboard Renee & despite my above blusterings I hope you have a fine Christmas:))

Now, without further ado I'm going to back myself out of here & go hum myself a Christmas Carol...........backwards!!

Amen to all the above. We still celebrate Christmas the old way, except this year we're going to miss church, and for the first time in years, we have company coming for dinner, some very fine friends. But stay away from the stores.

Nice pics of those Sandhill Cranes! Paulette loves Christmas and everything associated with it - especially since all the kids come home. I enjoy just sitting back and watching all the hubbub and getting lost in the crowd.

AL'S CAMERA EQUIPMENT

A sometimes asked question readers have about my blog is what kind of a camera do I use. Well I have 8 of them and use them all. Five Nikon DSLR's, two quality Sony point and shoots plus one older Canon point and shoot.

'UPDATE':: July 2017 Thanks to a very generous blog reader I have been able to update my Nikon camera equipment and supplement my camera gear with a couple additional fine Sony cameras as well.I now have a 'donated' Nikon D7200 sporting my new Nikkor 18-300 3.5 zoom lens. Also have picked up a new Nikkor 1.8 primary 35mm lens. In addition I also now have a Sony RX100-3 camera as well as a Sony Exmore Cybershot. I have given my Canon Powershot point and shoot camera to a neighbor.

- In early 2017 I replaced my Nikon D-90 camera with a new D-3400 after the 'auto focus' feature on my aging D-90 quit working. The Nikon D-90 had been my work horse camera sporting a Nikkor 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 lens. I used this camera for most of my landscapes and I now have it set up for night photography where 'auto focus' is not necessary.

-My older faithful and favorite Nikon D-40 finally packed it in during the summer of 2015 and I replaced it with a new Nikon D-3100.

- Previous to my Nikon D-90, most of my photos were taken with my old faithful Nikon D-50 from 2006 to early 2011 whereupon the D-50 suffered a rather gruesome death when it fell off a table onto a cement porch in southeastern Arizona. The 70-300mm lens on the camera survived the fall but the D-50 did not. My Nikkor lenses are interchangable between the D-90 the D-3100 and the D-3400.